EliGE: "Our main goal is to be winning the Major"
In their opening series of BLAST Spring Groups, Liquid shocked OG and many in the community by picking Nuke. This was the first time Liquid had ventured onto Nuke in an official game since IEM Winter 2021. Losing in double overtime, Liquid returned to more familiar territory in their second encounter versus OG, picking Mirage.
Briefly touching on the surprising Nuke pick, James Banks stated asked Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski about what went wrong on Mirage, a map he affirmed that he is very confident watching Liquid on. EliGE agreed with the assessment that it is one of Liquid's best maps, however, he gave some interesting insight into the practice levels that Mirage has received lately:
Mirage is definitely our best map, and it's also one of the maps that you practice a little bit less since it is one of your best and you have other things to work on.
"We haven't gone back to the drawing board on it like some of the other maps" was the assessment that EliGE gave on their underwhelming Mirage display. Going back to the drawing board on Mirage might be a necessary precaution for Liquid, with IEM Katowice slowly creeping over the horizon. With just the BLAST Spring groups taking place prior to one of the most prestigious events of the year, EliGE affirmed that they weren't taking the losses too much to heart:
We came into BLAST Groups knowing that it wasn't going to be our best event. We want to make sure that we go into Katowice super strong. We're working on our map pool and our weak maps for this event because you do just learn the most from matches.
Now in the knockout stage of the BLAST Groups, not many would have expected Liquid to finish the bottom two of Group B. Squaring off against BIG on Friday, EliGE is determined to avoid the Spring Showdown and has also given a glimpse into the goals that he has his eyes set on.
Our main goal is to be winning the Major in a couple of months and have a super strong Katowice. Obviously not going to the showdown is the main goal here.
Liquid's first step in trying to avoid the Showdown will be on Friday against BIG at 12:30PM
